Everton have entered the transfer market to snap up a free agent following the injury to Jordan Pickford - with the signing of Eldin Jakupovic who hasn’t played a first team match for over four years.
England number one Pickford has been sidelined for around a month with a thigh injury and with veteran third choice Andy Lonergan also out with a knee injury plus Joao Virginia, who made three appearances in 2020/21 and Harry Tyrer, out on loan at Eredivisie side Cambuur and National League North outfit Chester respectively, Begovic was Frank Lampard’s only available goalkeeper with Premier League experience.
Jakupovic, 37, has played in the English top flight for both Hull City and Leicester City but although his contract with the latter only expired this summer, his most recent first team outing was in the Foxes’ 5-4 defeat at Tottenham Hotspur on the final day of the 2017/18 season under Claude Puel.
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Since then he has mostly been restricted to appearances on Leicester’s bench for cup matches although he was in the matchday squad nine times in the Premier League last term when Kasper Schmeichel’s understudy Danny Ward – now first choice after the long-serving captain’s departure to Nice – was unavailable.
Jakupovic did play 26 Premier League matches for his previous club Hull City, including 22 in the 2016/17 season having first arrived in England a decade ago while the Yorkshire outfit loaned him out to League One Leyton Orient in 2013/14 and he played 13 matches for the Londoners.
Earlier in his career, he played in Switzerland for Grasshoppers and Thun, in Russia for Lokomotiv Moscow and in Greece for Olympiakos and Aris.
The arrival of 6ft 3in Jakupovic means that Everton now have two Bosnia and Herzegovina born goalkeepers on their books with Begovic having been capped 63 times by the Balkan nation but despite representing his homeland twice at Under-21s level, the Blues newest arrival made a solitary international appearance for Switzerland in a friendly against Cyprus in 2008.
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